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Craige: Happy to have an invader

Cosmo Talks

My sponge bill is way high.

One summer evening, some dear friends came by to see Cosmo and have a glass of wine. I think they also wanted to see me too, though I’m not sure. Cosmo is my African grey parrot who is much more interesting to folks than I am.

Cosmo talks. But she also walks. While we humans were enjoying our wine and cheese, Cosmo climbed down from her cage, walked into the kitchen, opened the cabinet door under the sink, pulled out a new package of blue sponges, ripped the cellophane, extracted a sponge and proceeded to destroy it.

Just about the time I noticed her absence from the living room, I heard Cosmo say to herself, very softly, “No, no.”

I rushed into the kitchen to find pieces of blue sponge all over the kitchen floor. Cosmo dropped the remnant of the sponge, looked up at me, and said, “Hi!”

This was not the first time Cosmo had gone under the sink to get a sponge, nor was it the last. She remembers where I keep new sponges, and she goes after them every chance she gets.

If I had to state Cosmo’s mission in life, I’d say it’s to modify her environment. Wherever she goes in the house, Cosmo changes what was already there. If she’s on the kitchen counter, she picks up forks and drops them on the floor. If she’s on the kitchen floor, she hauls pots and pans out of the cupboard. If she’s on her car cage, she removes the fasteners of the food dishes and dumps their contents onto the table.

If she’s in my study, she pulls the books off the shelves. If she finds a pen, she takes it apart. If she gets access to a baseboard, she turns it into sawdust. If she gets access to toes, she bites them. If I go outside, she mimics the ring of the phone, and I run in to get it. I could go on.

In exasperation, I’ve wondered why in creation Cosmo won’t leave things where they are. But then I’ve thought: What do I want her to do? Stand still on top of a cage — or worse, incarcerated in a cage — look pretty, talk and whistle all day long? Of course I don’t. That would not be natural.

Asking Cosmo to stand still would be like asking kudzu to grow nicely in a flower bed.

Come to think of it, Cosmo is a non-native (exotic) invasive species in my household. I invited her in, so I should expect the chaos she brings.

Everybody modifies his or her environment, in the course of doing what comes naturally. People, parrots, platypuses, pandas, piranhas, petunias, plankton. Beavers and gophers, who are ecosystem engineers, do it big-time.

Wild animals in their natural habitat follow their urges to eat, fend off competitors, make babies and have a little fun along the way. They hunt, fish or graze, making small changes to their environment with every bite they take. The woods are never the same from day to day, year to year. Nor is the desert. Nor the tundra. Nor the seas, lakes, rivers, streams.

We’ve known this since the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus observed, “Everything changes, and nothing remains still. ... You cannot step twice into the same stream.”

But we don’t notice how wild animals — with the possible exception of beavers and gophers — modify their environments. If they are living where their ancestors lived, most of them don’t change their habitat fundamentally.

A newcomer whose ancestors lived elsewhere does, because the newcomer without natural predators in his adopted environment may proliferate uncontrollably and outcompete the old-timers for food. That’s what kudzu and armadillos and fire ants are doing around here.

(I don’t want to contemplate the question of whether humans act like invasive, non-native species on our planet, at least not now.)

Anyway, I wanted Cosmo to invade my world, and I’ve accepted happily the fundamental changes she’s wrought in my habitat. In fact, I’ve come to admire my dear parrot’s heroic efforts to have an exciting, fun-filled, intellectually stimulating life in a foreign land — my house — where no parrot has walked before.

I understand that not everybody will love a parrot. Some folks will prefer kudzu.

• Betty Jean Craige is professor emerita of comparative literature at the University of Georgia and the author of many books, including “Conversations With Cosmo: At Home With an African Grey Parrot” (2010). Her email is bettyjean@cosmotalks.com. Cosmo’s website is www.cosmotalks.com.